Mr Clugston protests that we have got him all wrong. It seems that when he asks learners whether they know the word for “shoelace” or “peacock” what he actually seeks to establish is whether the person is able to describe the action of “changing a lightbulb”, “unlocking a car’s door”, or “fitting a seat-belt”…
Ah well, at least I would easily pass all of those in German! (As would anyone else who has lived there, I guess!?)
Still not entirely clear what shoelaces have to do with lightbulbs? But there you go…
The thing is with Clugston, some of what he says is actually quite interesting. But he has a really serious atttude problem. Did you notice, for example, how he refers to the thread ‘Fictional Scenarios For Functional Fluency’, saying “…that’s all thanks to me you BASTARDS!”
A ‘bastard’? Moi? Why, almost nobody has ever said that I look like the milkman!
I did not watch that far into the video, but having watched it now, I think you are right about what he says being sometimes interesting. To be honest, I barely understood a thing that he said (what is ‘field linguistics’?), but his point about there being a difference between being able to describe something and knowing the exact word for something seemed to make sense.
I wish Christophe would answer the following question:
Why does he feel that the study of field linguistics is a prerequisite to learning or teaching a well-documented language (Spanish, Japanese, Russian, etc.)?